ROCKFORD - It usually takes two trips to bring the cold and homeless from foyers at the Winnebago County Criminal Justice Center three miles to the church-lady potluck, blankets and a warm place to sleep.

After a 10-minute ride in a 1989 Dodge nine-passenger van, people without a place to stay are delivered to Apostolic Pentecostals of Rockford, 840 Mattis Ave., where food, prayer, devotion, blankets, and a pew or floor to sleep on await.

"They're not very comfortable," David Franklin, 54, said Monday about sleeping on a wooden bench.

"They're more comfortable than a snowbank," countered Thomas Stirling, 34.

For three days both stayed at the church southeast of Harrison Avenue and Kishwaukee Street behind Rockford Products that might easily be mistaken for several garages built in an L-shape.

Overnight guests are usually required to wake up and be ready to go back downtown at 7:30 a.m. But Arctic cold prompted Pastor Dave Frederick to relax the rules, allowing about 20 people to stay for several days.

They hunkered down in the sanctuary to wait out the most bitter stretch of weather in years.

While broken pipes, furnace trouble and dead car batteries are worries of the affluent when "polar vortex" becomes a household phrase, staying safe, warm and alive are worries of those on the street.

If they stay outside, they must worry about hypothermia - when the body loses heat faster than it can produce it - frostbite and other injuries induced by severe cold.

Tate was well-known among local advocates for the homeless. He was remembered last month during a memorial service at Carpenter's Place, a block from Seventh Street and Railroad Avenue, where Frederick initially founded Apostolic Pentecostals about four years ago.

The former Rockford real estate agent saw neighborhoods along Kishwaukee and Seventh streets where people were poor and suffering. When he left here to seed Pentecostal churches in southern Illinois and Georgia, he wanted to start a church here if he came back.

Page 2 of 4 - In 2010, he did. The Pentecostal minister and barber - he owns and cuts hair at Frederick's Barbershop in Rockford and Poplar Grove - founded the church that serves people free meals on Saturday nights and offers salvation on the Sabbath.

The idea for an overnight warming center came from the pews. A church member, concerned about homeless people on the streets in the winter, suggested providing a warm place for those who had nowhere else to go.

An outreach ministry was born.

How it works

The warming center is run by church volunteers. Members and nonmembers bring food, blankets and clothing to the shelter and share overnight sentry duty in two-hour shifts to make sure everyone stays safe.

"My husband's main goal isn't to just get them warm but to get the word of God in them so they can turn their lives around," Theresa Frederick said.

Word of mouth about the church spread, and cold nights got busier. But months after the homeless started coming, the church lost its lease.

"I don't want to bad-mouth" the landlord, the pastor said, "but I think it was because of the warming shelter."

The church quickly found a new building, moving from the city's core to a neighborhood where homeless people weren't wandering past. After the move, there was no warming shelter at the church. But church members knew there was a need.

"We started hearing about people freezing to death last year," said Mary Stricker, a petite church member with long gray hair who is among a half-dozen women who cook soups, chilis and goulashes at home and bring it to the church to feed shelter guests.

"That's when we decided to do it again."

'3 chances'

The shelter opened Nov. 1. It is scheduled to close Feb. 28, weather permitting.

It opens at 8:15 on nights when the temperature is 29 degrees or lower.

Then the van is dispatched downtown. A driver picks up guests at 8:30 p.m., making two trips if necessary to bring people to the church.

Rules are simple: No swearing. No fighting. No intoxication. No verbal abuse. Guests must be respectful.

And they must listen to Junior and Linda Owens, who run the shelter.

"You get some bad apples, but you get that wherever you go," said Linda, who was homeless for 20 years in Chicago and understands what guests are going through.

"We give them three chances here."

She and Junior met at the church on a free-supper Saturday. Linda noticed Junior outside looking into the window a couple of Saturdays during the meal. One night Junior, who was homeless, came in.

He said he'd clean up after supper if he could just have some potato chips.

Page 3 of 4 - "I'd take him a big old plate of food and he'd say he just wanted some of the chips," she said.

That was the start of their courtship. Junior left the streets and moved into Linda's apartment. They were married on Christmas Day 2011 by Pastor Frederick. Linda is taking classes, working toward a GED.

Last summer they moved into a house on Oakley Avenue.

"The warming center has been good for Junior and Linda," Frederick said. "They needed something to make their own."

Life's curve ball

Each guest has a story about how he or she became homeless. Many suffered traumatic events, some as children, that they've not been able to overcome.

He said guests are often stigmatized and misunderstood by people of means.

"People don't just wake up one day and say, 'I'll be homeless.' I would say the majority do not want to be in the position they're in. Life threw them a curve ball and they missed it.

"People think just because everything they own is in a backpack that they're a bum. It's not really true. Circumstances may have put them here.

"If my son or my daughter was on the street, I'd want somebody to open their doors for them."

Since 2010, the church has baptized more than 50 people, he said. Many of the received are transient, who may stay with the church for weeks or months before moving on.

"At least they hear the word of God and hear about Jesus," the pastor said. "What they do with it after that is up to them. But at least they heard it."

And on the coldest nights, the Apostolic Pentecostals provide refuge for some of the 800 to 2,000 people in the Rockford area who are homeless.

Counting clients

The number is vague because of how homeless people are counted, said Shelton Kay, who runs Crusader Community Health's Care for the Homeless program.

Kay said the federal government requires agencies and shelters to count the number of people they provide services over 24 hours. If someone doesn't access homeless services in that period, they aren't counted. Last year 800 people were counted; Kay says many were missed.

"We are not able to capture the couch surfers who are staying with a friend," he said.

But if it's cold on survey day at the end of this month, shelters like the one run by Apostolic Pentecosts and Rockford Rescue Mission are likely to have 150 or more people looking for warmth, Kay said.

Scott Schneider may be one of them.

The 45-year-old has spent many winters outside, sleeping in tents and abandoned buildings with several layers of blankets below and above him to stay warm.

Page 4 of 4 - Now he seeks warmth on frigid nights.

That's because the past two winters his feet slipped out from beneath blankets on cold nights as he slept.

"I've been doing it for years," he said of living outdoors, "but I got frostbite."

He's got nerve damage in his feet and is grateful for the pills he gets from Crusader Community Health to help him deal with the pain and high blood pressure.

Schneider is also grateful for a warm place to sleep, even if it's on the floor.

"It doesn't bother me a bit," he said. "I'd be sleeping on the floor some place anyway."